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• 144 SIR WALTER SCOTT MT. 45

and the impudent ingratitude of the Selkirk rising gener-
ation, and I will take the usual liberty your friendship
permits me, of saying what occurs to me on each subject.
Eespeeting the shooting, the crime is highly punishable,
and we will omit no inquiries to discover the individuals
guilty. Charles Erskine, who is a good police-officer,
will be sufficiently active. I know my friend and kins-
man, Mr. Scott of Harden, feels very anxious to oblige
your Grace, and I have little doubt that if you will have
the goodness to mention to him this unpleasant circum-
stance, he would be anxious to put his game under such
regulations as should be agreeable to you. But I believe
the pride and pleasure he would feel in obliging your
Grace, as heading one of the most ancient and most re-
spectable branches of your name (if I may be pardoned
for saying so much in our favor), would be certainly
much more gratified by a compliance with your personal
request, than if it came through any other channel.
Your Grace knows there are many instances in life in
which the most effectual way of conferring a favor is
condescending to accept one. I have known Harden
long and most intimately — a more respectable man,
either for feeling, or talent, or knowledge of human life,
is rarely to be met with. But he is rather indecisive —
requiring some instant stimulus in order to make him
resolve to do, not only what he knows to be right, but
what he really wishes to do, and means to do one time
or other. He is exactly Prior's Earl of Oxford: —

" Let that be done which Mat doth say."
" Yea," quoth the Earl, " lut not to-day:'

And so exit Harden, and enter Selkirk.

I know hardly anything more exasperating than the
conduct of the little blackguards, and it will be easy to
discover and make an example of the biggest and most
insolent. In the mean while, my dear Lord, pardon my
requesting you will take no general or sweeping resolu-
tion as to the Selkirk folks. Your Grace lives near



	• 144 SIR WALTER SCOTT MT. 45 and the impudent ingratitude of the Selkirk rising gener- ation, and I will take the usual liberty your friendship permits me, of saying what occurs to me on each subject. Eespeeting the shooting, the crime is highly punishable, and we will omit no inquiries to discover the individuals guilty. Charles Erskine, who is a good police-officer, will be sufficiently active. I know my friend and kins- man, Mr. Scott of Harden, feels very anxious to oblige your Grace, and I have little doubt that if you will have the goodness to mention to him this unpleasant circum- stance, he would be anxious to put his game under such regulations as should be agreeable to you. But I believe the pride and pleasure he would feel in obliging your Grace, as heading one of the most ancient and most re- spectable branches of your name (if I may be pardoned for saying so much in our favor), would be certainly much more gratified by a compliance with your personal request, than if it came through any other channel. Your Grace knows there are many instances in life in which the most effectual way of conferring a favor is condescending to accept one. I have known Harden long and most intimately — a more respectable man, either for feeling, or talent, or knowledge of human life, is rarely to be met with. But he is rather indecisive — requiring some instant stimulus in order to make him resolve to do, not only what he knows to be right, but what he really wishes to do, and means to do one time or other. He is exactly Prior's Earl of Oxford: — " Let that be done which Mat doth say." " Yea," quoth the Earl, " lut not to-day:' And so exit Harden, and enter Selkirk. I know hardly anything more exasperating than the conduct of the little blackguards, and it will be easy to discover and make an example of the biggest and most insolent. In the mean while, my dear Lord, pardon my requesting you will take no general or sweeping resolu- tion as to the Selkirk folks. Your Grace lives near